The Balance of Need
by ItsADuckStupid
Summary: Life could be so simple if you have what you need. But often times what we need is not what we want, and that’s where we lose ourselves.


Title: The Balance of Need  
  
Author: Duck  
  
Rating: PG  
  
Genre: Angst, of course  
  
Summary: Life could be so simple if you have what you need. But often times what we need is not what we want, and that's where we lose ourselves.  
  
A/N: Inspiration strikes me at the oddest times, like during Spanish, or after I see the Matrix Reloaded (good movie, btw), but whatever. Started this during my Spanish class and totally revised it after seeing the Matrix and listening to "Sing Glory" by Jason Mraz repeatedly. Thanks to Neums for the encouragement and for being much the best.  
  
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The Balance of Need  
  
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It's about need more than anything else.  
  
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She wishes she could attribute the pain to something other than a dependency. She hates not being able to rely on herself, but this is out of her hands.  
  
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She needs him in the morning waking her from deep slumber with a soft kiss to her shoulder. She needs the smiles and the last minute coffee as they run out the door and he's tying his tie in the car as she burns her tongue on the said coffee because they have an eight o clock debrief and the TV reported two accidents on the freeway they take to get to the Ops Center.  
  
She needs to see his smile across the task force center that makes her smile in return and slightly blush as she remembers the way his eyes caught the light of the streetlamp that shines in through her bedroom window. After sitting through a meeting a quick kiss on their way out to grab a sandwich at the deli down the street.  
  
Him, holding her hand in the car ride home running circles into her palm with his thumb, soothing her from the horrors she faced that day. Not having to ask him to stay for dinner but naturally assume that he will, and Francie has brought some leftovers that they both eat in front of the TV as they watch the Kings get creamed by the Red Wings. Trying to cheer him up after the devastating loss, kissing him senseless until she is the only thing in his world.   
  
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Normalcy was the ultimate paradise, the reward for everything she did everyday; she wishes she had lived every moment to it's extent.  
  
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As much as she needs him during the sunlit hours, it is nothing compared to the aching loss she is filled with at night. It is said that humans are at their weakest at night because everything becomes different and unknown, and the unknown is what we fear most of all. Sydney is no exception, and while most are unaware of this trepidation of the mind, she is plagued constantly by what she does not know, what she cannot remember.  
  
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The future scares her, but the past drives a deeper fear into her heart.  
  
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The streetlamp is gone, but it is hardly a consolation for the torture she lives through each twilight minute. Victims of amputation sometimes have phantom pains, an itch or ache where there is no longer a limb. She suffers from a similar condition, except her limbs are intact; it is the absence of another's skin against hers that cause her pains. Phantom caresses keep her awake into the morning hours as she revels in heat it elicits. If she closes her eyes she can see him with her, and the phantom kiss on her clavicle is so real she can feel the moisture left from the touch of his lips, a promise of more to come except for that when her lids open there is nothing except the shadows enveloping her.  
  
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When the shadows rise in the early morning sun she is left only with phantom pleasures.  
  
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It was not so long ago that she needed him, in a different way, but the parallels are there all the same. Her need was based on the simple fact that she knew nothing about him; what was his favorite movie, what coffee did he drink, how did he taste; those were the questions that she needed answered, and there was a want deep inside that drove her into the next day. Now it is based on the truth that she misses him; his smile, his laughter, the way he became a crazy hockey fan, the way he touched her; these are the things she looks for when she comes home from her job, these are the things she would kill someone for to get back.  
  
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Before she needed to discover him. Now she needs to remember him.  
  
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This dependency will drive her slowly insane until she forces herself to sever the ties holding her to him, then, and only then, can she be cured of this enslavement she tries so hard to break free of. It will take the acknowledgement that the past will not repeat itself for her to sever the ties, and before that she must stop harboring a deep hope that the world will right itself as she sleeps, and she will be awoken by a soft kiss to the shoulder and scalding coffee. She has to stop wishing for leftovers and hockey games; she has to stop wishing for the past.  
  
But that can only come when she allows herself to travel into the unknown, to the past and future that does not involve him. The necessity she tries so hard to forget to change and conform to something else entirely, and only then will she regain the independency of love.  
  
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She has always thought of herself as an independent woman, someone who could live with someone, as well as without. She never figured on this.  
  
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Her mother once told her what she wanted and what she needed were two different things, and for once she can agree. She wants him, but not as the Mr. of Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn, the only way he can be had, and that confuses the wants and the needs swarming inside her mind. She wants the old Vaughn, the Vaughn that could make her laugh and whom she ate sandwiches with at the deli down the street. But what she needs is a fulcrum, something that can balance out the world that has been so carelessly thrown off kilter. Whether or not the equilibrium lies in the arms of a man, she can't be sure, but she hopes that she can achieve it on her own terms.  
  
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She doesn't know what she wants anymore, but what she needs isn't clear either.  
  
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Life could be so simple if you have what you need. But often times what we need is not what we want, and that's where we lose ourselves. 


End file.
